Vehicles for amusement park rides have existed for a long time. Earliest vehicles rode on tracks. These vehicles were loud, due to the metal-on-metal sound of wheels on tracks. Rides making use of these vehicles were not amenable to changes, because of the difficulty of removing, reconfiguring, and reinstalling the tracks. Additionally, these vehicles were not selfpowered. Each vehicle, or a string of vehicles, may have been coupled to a rope, chain, or cable that ran in a continuous loop throughout the ride. The movement of the rope, chain, or cable also caused undesirable noise. Moreover, the mere existence of the rope, chain, or cable posed a physical threat (due to tripping or entanglement) to any person departing the safety of the ride vehicle and to the amusement ride operators themselves.
An innovation applied to the earliest vehicles came in the form of an on-board electric motor that was powered by an off-board power supply. To transfer electrical power to the electric motor, vehicles running on tracks made use of a “third rail” that ran between or to the side of the tracks typically at a predetermined fixed distance from the track. Conductive metal brushes or shoes protruding from the vehicle made contact with the third rail. Electrical power typically ran from the third rail to the electric motor of the vehicle via the brushes or shoes and was returned to ground via the vehicle's metal wheel making contact with the grounded metal track of the ride. Electrical vehicles of this type presented the serious danger of electrocution of a patron if the patron left the ride vehicle and stumbled on an electrified third-rail. Additionally, electrical vehicles of this type were still bound to a track and all of the problems related thereto.
Not all electric ride vehicles are bound to tracks. Vehicles such as “bumper cars,” which are steered by the passenger, typically obtained electrical power via a brush or solid conductor scraping across an electrified grid positioned above the ride. Electrical current was returned to ground via similar contacts or metal rollers directly to the solid metal floor of the ride. Electrical vehicles of this type also present the serious danger of electrocution of a patron if the patron made contact with an improperly insulated pole (supporting the contact scraping the electrified grid above the ride) and ground at the same time. These vehicles moreover typically presented the problem of a lack of safety features that could disable one or all of the vehicles in the ride if a patron was to leave a vehicle during the ride. Similar lack of safety features were present in electrified vehicles running on tracks.
Innovations relating to the powering of vehicles freed some vehicles from tracks. For example, Disney Enterprises, Inc. introduced a battery-powered ride vehicle in 1982 at its “Universe of Energy” pavilion at EPCOT® theme park. The World According to Jack, http://land.allears.net/blogs/jackspence/20 1 Oil O/universe_oLenergy 1.html (last visited May 8, 2012). In this ride, patrons “were transported through the pavilion in large battery-powered ‘traveling theatre cars’ that followed guide-wires embedded in the floor as opposed to riding along conventional ride tracks.” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe_oLEnergy (last visited Apr. 17, 2012). This type of ride presents two problems in the field of ride vehicles.
First, the locomotion of large battery-operated vehicles consumes a great deal of energy. Storage of a large amount of energy requires many rechargeable-type batteries. For the Universe of Energy vehicles, “each vehicle carries eight automotive batteries. Of course, these batteries need to be recharged frequently so within the attraction's two turntables are ‘charging plates’ that contain electromagnets. The magnets work in conjunction with onboard magnets that create an electric current that is transferred to the vehicle's batteries.” The World According to Jack, supra. It is believed that the ratio of the amount of time this type of vehicle spends on its charging station (e.g., turntable) vs. the amount of time the vehicle spends moving under its own power, is greater than one. Accordingly, the vehicle's batteries are slowly being charged for long periods relative to the time when the vehicle is in motion.
Second, vehicles that use guide-wires embedded in a floor, similar to vehicles that ride on tracks, are not amenable to changes in the configuration of the vehicle's path of travel, because of the difficulty of removing, reconfiguring, and reinstalling the wires. Moreover, just like tracks, a vehicle following a guide wire must stay on the guide wire, therefore, it must eventually return to the point from which it began its journey and cannot easily, if at all, follow a path that crosses over itself.
Still other problems confront designers of modern amusement rides. Patrons are no longer satisfied with simply moving through a ride while being maintained in one plane of travel. Patrons may wish to experience yaw (i.e., rotation in the x-y plane), pitch (i.e., climb and dive), roll (pitching left and right), and heave (vertical motion along the z-axis). Motion assemblies exist that provide these four degrees of motion to ride patrons; however, due to the very large consumption of power (necessitated by moving a platform that supports the weight of a given number of patrons through space in these directions), known four degree of freedom motion assemblies are coupled to fixed supplies of electrical power. This limits the mounting of prior art motion assemblies either to fixed locations or to mounts on tracks that use a “third rail” type of electrical connection to supply power to the motion assembly. The former situation is problematic at least because patrons are usually confined to a single room (which may move in yaw, roll, pitch, and heave) while images are projected on the walls within the room. The latter situation is problematic at least because patrons face all the same issues faced by patrons of older ride vehicles that were confined to riding on tracks; additionally there is the danger of electrocution if a patron was to leave the ride vehicle and stumble on the electrified third-rail.
Still other problems exist with respect to the motions of prior art vehicles. For example, there are no known prior art vehicles that can “crab,” that is, move in a linearly diagonal direction at a given angle, for example 45° while the vehicle faces forward at 0°. Additionally, known prior art vehicles do not typically cross over their own paths or operate simultaneously with other vehicles while following paths that interweave the vehicles. The ability to interweave the paths of multiple simultaneously operating ride vehicles is desirable in 3 situations where ride designers want to mimic the seemingly random patterns made by a moving school of fish, a swooping flock of sparrows, or a running herd of wild animals.
The recharging of battery operated vehicles is also problematic. Designers of battery operated vehicles might base the battery capacity on the expected amount of charge needed to be stored to move a fully loaded vehicle through a show from start to finish, for a given number of shows per day; this amount of charge might be called the maximum charge value. During the course of the show(s), the charge would be drained from the battery. A typical battery might be cycled from 100% of its maximum charge value down to 10% of its maximum charge value; because a typical design would extract all of the charge possible from the battery before recharging the battery. Once the battery was depleted (e.g., to the 10% level), the battery would be connected to a charging system that would slowly charge the battery from its depleted level back to the maximum charge value for the next show. Rapid charging was not possible, as batteries would overheat if too much charge were pushed into them too quickly. Therefore, once a vehicle's charge was depleted it would be taken out of service for recharging. An out of service vehicle would need to be replaced by an extra vehicle.
What is needed is a ride vehicle that is self-powered, can find its way through an amusement by dead-reckoning, is mechanically designed and electrically managed to be efficient in its use of energy, is not restricted to draw energy from a track or follow a track or wire, can be programmed to travel in a seemingly random pattern while crossing over the paths of other vehicles operating simultaneously in close proximity, permits independent rotation of an upper passenger platform with respect to a lower steering and propulsion platform, where the upper platform moves in pitch and roll and the rotates with respect to the lower platform to move in yaw, and is not required to be removed from service, or sit in one location for a long period of time relative to the time it is in motion, to recharge its batteries.